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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

to ask how do private schools produce such "confident" kids / adults and how I can do it at home?

995 replies

dragontwo · 12/06/2018 21:11

Ok, I have my reservations about private schools, but I recognise that often they produce kids / adults with high self confidence and self assurance.

I want to know how they do this, how they drill this confidence into them, and how I can replicate any beneficial aspects of this at home into my own kid (state schooled)?

What do they say / do / teach that encourages them to be so confident and expect success?

I know there are down sides to everything but I'm just thinking about good ideas I can help my kid. NB I'm no tiger mother and do my best to encourage my kid as it is already but just looking for ideas and general thoughts on how it's done!!

Just curious!

OP posts:
Cheerymom · 16/06/2018 20:02

Blue 'I resent the idea that A level teachers in private schools don't know what they are doing. Frankly, I do know how to teach my subject up to, and including, A level. If you think "anyone can wing it to KS3" then you clearly don't know what you are talking about, regardless of how many post graduate qualifications you have. Anyone can stand up in front of a KS3 class - but it takes a great deal of skill and subject knowledge to teach effectively that age group' I am not saying all A level teachers in private schools don't know what they are doing, not at all but they can and do teach the subject some without any training. By wing it I meant learn a KS3 syllabus, Most of us have been asked to teach KS3 subjects we are not trained and and do it well. But morally I was asked and refused to teach GCSE and A Level subjects I was not qualified in because it is a massive insult to the parents who pay a lot and deserve properly trained teachers in that subject.

OCSock · 16/06/2018 20:13

On the other hand, I don't think I would go as far as Scipio in suggesting that it is mostly luck that determines wealth. We are quite a long way from being wealthy, and we have worked for what we have now, which is a comfortably MC life. My DH has a small but successful and very specialist business in engineering, that he has built over the last 30 years, but it was 15 years in establishing itself, and my earnings were what kept food on the table for most of the early years.

The willingness to take risks is a factor in life success, and I think it's much easier to go out on a limb if you have known others to succeed.

If you need the security of a guaranteed public sector service income/salary to feel comfortable, then you may be happier settling for employment. In which case, you have to be a high skilled professional in something like medicine or law or accountancy to earn enough to pay school fees.

Cblue · 16/06/2018 20:17

@Cheerymom - do you mean me?

Nowhere on this thread have I said that A Level teachers at ANY school be it private or state don't know what they are doing? I don't think anything I have written could even be interpreted as that.

I haven't said that about any teachers at any level!!!!!

ScipioAfricanus · 16/06/2018 20:19

Perhaps, OC. I suppose I’m thinking of social mobility too which is getting worse. So if you’re lucky to be born into a rich family you’re more likely to then have advantages (old boys club etc) yourself and then be rich in turn. I think self made entrepreneurs without a safety net are rarer than people from inherited wealth. I may be wrong though! I agree that having an ability to take risks and be hard working etc do contribute. But (unlike my dad) I don’t believe that wealthy people work harder than less wealthy people (as a rule).

OCSock · 16/06/2018 20:39

No Scipio, nor do we think that wealthy people work harder. But they do work differently. DH is trying to work out the follow up to him in his small company and how it will keep going after he retires. His entrepreneurial instinct will need to be preserved and transmitted forward, because that's what keeps the business moving and growing. Finding the person who understands both the business environment and the science is hard. Finding a person who also has the commercial skills (and the willingness to stick to it when times are lean and business hard to win) is akin to winning the lottery. And when the person you need must also have the right personality and temperament to lead and manage, you start to define the qualities that are crucial in life.

ScipioAfricanus · 16/06/2018 20:45

they do work differently

As I said, I’d agree with you in some professions - your DH’s entrepreneurial qualities are clearly different from many of mine. But not all wealthy people have those kinds of jobs. Do you feel all wealthy people have the skills to manage and lead as opposed to those in less lucrative professions? (Genuine question here as I don’t. And I guess my point about working hard is more that one type of work isn’t better, per se, just because it is more lucrative, which I think some (many?) wealthy people believe.

BertrandRussell · 16/06/2018 20:47

Alan Bennett said that if you reach the end of private education without coming to the conclusion that private education should be abolished, then your education has been a failure. Or words to that effect.

ScipioAfricanus · 16/06/2018 20:55

Thanks, Bertrand. I’ve googled it. He said:

Private education is not fair. Those who provide it know it. Those who pay for it know it. Those who have to sacrifice in order to purchase it know it. And those who receive it know it, or should. And if their education ends without it dawning on them, then that education has been wasted.

I completely agree. I disagree fundamentally with it, but I benefitted from it myself, and I teach in private schools now (have taught in state but am unlikely to do so again while state education is being so messed about with). My child will be at least partially privately educated. But I wish it was abolished.

THEsonofaBITCH · 16/06/2018 21:09

Alan Bennett said that if you reach the end of private education without coming to the conclusion that private education should be abolished, then your education has been a failure. Or words to that effect.
Your bias is showing

letstalk2000 · 16/06/2018 21:12

Despite being an outstanding playwright and author , Alan Bennett really is a man with a serious 'chip' on his shoulder.

This is despite being a 'multi- millionaire' lionised champagne leftie , like that other Oxford establishment prick Ken Loach !

Bertrand would you like to live in a country , which tells you where and how to spend your own earned money . I bet you believe in Isaiah Berlin's concepts of Negative and Positive freedom regarding the use of private schools , by people.

Negative freedom is to suggest a person is free to chose private education for their children, without interference or disdain from others .

Positive freedom would interpret like you do that the use of private schools is bad for society s a whole !

Personally speaking I believe a person should act in the best interests of their family . This opposed to a 'mythical' benefit for society !

OCSock · 16/06/2018 21:13

I don't know "all wealthy people". Some people have a very specialist in-demand set of skills and a few have the ability to pluck and feather specialist needs efficiently and sustainably, and keep clients happy, and win new ones. If I knew the secret of how it could be applied more broadly, to extend and raise everyone's life chances, I'd be much, much happier and would feel obliged to share it.

ScipioAfricanus · 16/06/2018 21:37

I suppose I meant wealthy people in general, OC; you seem to want to nit pick about semantics. However, you can’t raise everyone’s life chances in a system built on inequality. Some people’s, maybe.

OCSock · 16/06/2018 21:38

There's no template for self-made success. If DH had been in his school's yearbook (no such thing in those days) he'd probably have been filed in the unlikely prospects for success category. And some of his contemporaries are probably more obviously successful than he is ever going to be. Success is only important to the degree that one fulfills one's expectation of oneself.

user1499173618 · 16/06/2018 21:40

As someone who attended private, state and other schools and has had DC in several types of school, I cannot conclude that private education is wrong. I dislike “luxury” education but I do not think state education is well enough resources to develop children properly. Private education is necessary to ensure skills develop both within individuals and in society at large.

Ohsuchaperfectday · 16/06/2018 22:04

Personally speaking I believe a person should act in the best interests of their family . This opposed to a 'mythical' benefit for society !

^^ I must admit I think there is something in this - because the happier and more well rounded someone is - the more positive energy they will give out.

Ohsuchaperfectday · 16/06/2018 22:04

sorry should have added and thats passed onto society.

BertrandRussell · 16/06/2018 22:14

“Your bias is showing”

Grin Really? And there was me thinking I was being completely impartial........

Ohsuchaperfectday · 16/06/2018 22:14

I was responding to a PP's assertion that one of the functions of a private school was to teach children how to fit into a particular social group-examples being the emphasis on table manners and greeting people properly. I pointed out that most pupils at private school would be part of that social group already, and would have learned those rules at home. This applies to them whether they are funded by grandparents, come from single parent families or have additional needs

Confused

Oh no! This is what I meant by my comments, so many dc at my school had no table manners, this is what I mean. You may get GP who have money later on for whatever reason, even off set for tax, their not what you call posh at all, their dc are not - but they pay for GC to have private education.

I suppose good example maybe Chloe Green and her baby daddys son being sent to top private school in UK but - he has been in prison and his family have. ) chloe greens dad owns top shop etc.

All kinds of people end up in PE - normal private schools with all different standards for everything.

Things have changed so much but I do understand the more elderly posters on here thinking its all sort of Camilla and Dianas day Grin

EBearhug · 16/06/2018 23:06

A few months, I was involved with conducting mock interviews with one of the local state schools. This was to give them practice and feedback - they also had CV-writing workshops and so on. My job was to interview some of them for about 12 minutes each and give feedback on their clothing, body language, answers (did they answer the question asked, did they expand on their answers, did they have a varied tone of voice and so on.)

In a real job application scenario, many of them wouldn't have made it as far as interview, so it was a far greater range of potential than you'd usually get at that point of an application process.

Some of them were pretty much monosyllabic, even when you prompted them to give an example or expand on things. Others were great - didn't need prompting, gave great, relevant answers which illustrated their experience of what was being asked. With one exception, these were people who were involved with a local sports team, or air cadets or scouts or DofE - that's where they had gained experience, leadership, a sense of responsibility. So do those outside activities - they do make a difference!

The exception was a boy who was a young carer - his single-parent mother has a degenerative disease, and his two siblings are quite a bit younger than he is, and that's where he's developed his time-management and sense of responsibility. He was great, and I really hope he gets the support he needs to do well.

I think those who go to private school are just more likely to get opportunities to lead and take part in extra activities, inside and outside side of school. They're more likely to see people like them doing it - "if you can see it, you can be it." There are state schools which try to do this too, but mostly, they simply don't have the resources to offer a wide enough range of activities that all children can find their niche, and not all parents have the resources or interstitial in helping their child take part in things out of school.

Plus private schools are selective, so quite probably, the disengaged, monosyllabic ones who prove to be resistant to efforts to change that, will have been advised that they will probably get on better in a different environment - which is an option state schools don't have as easily (despite the numbers getting permanently excluded.)

And the other thing is that we will mostly hear from the confident ones. The ones who end up full of anxiety, fearing failure so not risking failure - they aren't the ones leading businesses and talking on TV or being the ones everyone remembers at the end of a party, because they're disappearing into the background.

Having said that, I still think private education does tend to produce more confident people overall - just not all of them, in the same way that state educated people aren't all lacking confidence either.

gracielacey · 16/06/2018 23:23

Plus private schools are selective, so quite probably, the disengaged, monosyllabic ones who prove to be resistant to efforts to change that, will have been advised that they will probably get on better in a different environment

And they select not only by exam but by interview - so they can select the most engaging, articulate 11/13 year olds.

Dapplegrey · 17/06/2018 00:18

But I wish it was abolished.
Scipio, if that's what you think then it's extremely hypocritical of you to educate your dc privately - even partially.
If you want it abolished then why are you taking advantage of it?

ScipioAfricanus · 17/06/2018 00:31

I don’t find it hypocritical to take advantage of it, though I understand how it might look. I can disapprove of something and still want not to be disadvantaged by it. I wish it was abolished, so there was a level playing field for all. But I won’t purposely disadvantage my child if the playing field isn’t level. I feel everyone should be able to afford to feed their children well - but I won’t feed my child less well because, under the system we live, I have enough money to do that while some others don’t.

mathanxiety · 17/06/2018 05:49

I am not sure 'baby daddy' is a term that should go unchallenged. It's really very insulting to all the family members in the situation thus described.

mathanxiety · 17/06/2018 06:02

EBear:
I think those who go to private school are just more likely to get opportunities to lead and take part in extra activities, inside and outside side of school. They're more likely to see people like them doing it - "if you can see it, you can be it." There are state schools which try to do this too, but mostly, they simply don't have the resources to offer a wide enough range of activities that all children can find their niche, and not all parents have the resources or interstitial in helping their child take part in things out of school.

YY to that. It struck me when watching a documentary (School Swap?) where a private school welcomed three state school students and vice versa (and the Principals of both schools exchanged too, iirc) that the state school had so little to offer in terms of engaging the students whereas the private school had so many opportunities for increasing engagement, developing positive relationships between students and teachers, and in general creating a dynamic community that could address the needs of the whole child.

Like Scipio, I am able to take advantage of an excellent school (in my case a 'state' school, in the US, but what it offers probably exceeds what many private schools in the UK offer) that only caters for students in a particular catchment. To go to school there, families have to be able to either buy or rent a home within the catchment, and while there is a certain proportion of students who can be classed as disadvantaged, most are not at poverty level and some are very well off indeed. Property taxes levied within the catchment pay for the huge school budget. As a result of receiving a great foundation and being accepted into excellent universities, three of my children are now taxpayers themselves. What goes around comes around.

ImogenTubbs · 17/06/2018 07:23

DD is almost 5 and goes to a private school (we are not in the UK and costs are much much more affordable). Yesterday was her end of school show - ALL the kids performed in the auditorium for about 300+ parents, including the nursery kids. I thought about this thread and the fact that the children at this school all get used to this public performing from a young age - they build their confidence and enjoy the attention. It's just one small thing, but it definitely makes a difference.

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